Web Browser Collection

With the launch of Google’s Chrome web browser last week, I decided to expand my browser collection to include it and a number of other lesser-known ones. Being a web developer myself, I got used to looking at web sites in the biggies, Firefox and Internet Explorer, but I decided to have a couple others handy to make sure certain elements (mostly having to do with CSS and JavaScript) rendered reasonably well in other browsers.

12 Browsers
Quick Launch bar with 12 browser icons, among others.

FirefoxWhen Firefox got to be a hot topic a few years ago, having grabbed a bunch of the market share away from Internet Explorer, I decided to use Firefox primarily and haven’t gone back.

Internet ExplorerLook Familiar?  IE 7 caught up to the rest of the world with tabbed browsing!

NetscapeMy computer at work had Netscape on it for some reason. Uh, I guess AOL decided to end development on it, but if you want to get an unsupported oldie, you still can.

Apple SafariI added Apple’s Safari, basically just in case there was any difference in the way it handled CSS or JavaScript in the web applications I was working on.  I was able to detect and treat one issue as a result.

Opera BrowserOpera gave me a little more variety.

K-MeleonK-Meleon was the first browser I got just for the sake of getting another browser.  Nothing distinctive.

Goole ChromeGoogle Chrome.  Nothing chrome about it – It actually looks kind of like a piece of plastic.  Two standouts: 1) no normal window frame around it (annoying for me but that’s just my preference), and 2) the home page default includes your ‘most visited’ pages as thumbnail screenshots (don’t like that either).

Avant BrowserA coworker mentioned Avant Browser.  Not suggested, not recommended, just mentioned. Like Safari and Chrome, Avant has no standard window frame around it.  But at least it looks like a piece of sheet metal rather than Google’s plasticy Chrome.

SeaMonkeyI’ve happened upon the SeaMonkey Project before, thinking, “who wants yet another browser?”  Well, I do, now.  The SeaMonkey Project is an “all-in-one internet application suite”, including a browser (“Navigator”), mail and news reader, IRC chat client, and even an HTML editor (“Composer”).  Sounds like the new Netscape. Thankfully there’s an option to install only the browser sans all the other bloatware.

Maxthon BrowserMaxthon is full of features, some of which may even be really cool, like Super Drag&Drop, Screen Capture, and a bunch of plugins and other addons.

Flock BrowserThe “Media Streams” frame at the top of the Flock “Social Web Browser” might be interesting to some, annoying to others.

GOSURF BrowserI really just got GOSURF so I could have a 12th browser installed. The main GOSURF site is in Chinese or something.

3 Replies to “Web Browser Collection”

  1. Your post //NeilMeister.com » Blog Archive » Web Browser Collection was very interesting when I found it over google on Tuesday by my search for avant browser. I have your blog now in my bookmarks and I visit your blog again, soon. Take care. Parejaspareja.es

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